I was talking to Dad on the phone and ordering a salad in Sheetz at lunch today. Once I hung up with him, I realized that people, both employees and non-employees, were staring at me and smirking. As I grabbed my salad and went to leave, I dared a peek over my shoulder only to find two employees staring at me and laughing REALLY HARD.

Though it slammed my inner self all the way back to 9th grade and falling up the stairs while people chortled…

I’m not offended.

I’m not upset.

I simply want to know what horrible thing I said in public to make the people laugh. I want to laugh, too, dammit. Since my coworkers confirmed that I, in fact, am not walking around with my underwear hanging out, I assume it’s something I said to my father.

Were we talking about butts? Trump being a colossal idiot? Was I talking about my period?

There are very few things off the table when it comes to conversation with my parents. I was raised in a pretty open household and if you know me, you know that translates into “she cursed like a sailor, never learned how to wear pants in the house, could out-belch her dad at age 12, and was generally encouraged to question authority by both parents (though Mom was delightfully subversive about it, rather than being blunt)”.

So really, when you think about it, nothing is out of the realm of possibility here. I could have literally been talking about ANYTHING. And it was probably horrible.

I recently had butt surgery. Since then, I’ve had a stitch burst and a horrible time even thinking about the toilet or moving anywhere further than 10 feet.

It’s been rough, y’all.

Because of this, I finally stumbled upon the answer. This is the perfect motivation to eat well. I’m always super conscious of the consequences of my dietary actions now. Ludacris amounts of beef and cheese? No, thank you. Now, I eat a lot of veggies in place of beef and cheese. Surgery was expensive but it was effective in so many ways that I did not forsee.

Sometimes I think about how the job I have now didn’t really exist ten years ago. Social media marketing is a relatively new thing as far as jobs go. With that in mind, realize that my love of history didn’t waste time in branching out onto this train of thought.

I’m having butt surgery on the 30th. I’m not posting about it on Facebook. Everyone feels like they have to share every tiny little detail on there without actually conversing with anyone, and it’s finally starting to grate on me.

No one talks anymore. No one listens. It’s always, “Did you see my…” “Did you see his/her…”.

I guess in response to all of this, I want people to actually approach and interact with me. Call me. Talk to me. Send me a video chat. I haven’t changed my phone number in 15 years — you’ll get me. But I’m not going to post about my surgery on Facebook. It’s like talking into a void with a weird audience that acknowledges with a reaction but isn’t really there.

How is a blog on it different? This is more of a journal to myself (and the bots that watch it) where I can complain into the ether. Is Facebook like that? Maybe a little, for some. But it’s sad that there is such an audience for that. I don’t want to air my problems to people that will have a nanosecond reaction and move onto a Buzzfeed video.

I’ve needed to journal for far too long, but drafts kept backing up. 72 drafts-worth. I felt like I had to impart knowledge, somehow, to be useful. But the need is growing for me to get my thoughts out and this blog (and my hardback version) have to suffice for now.

How can we all have hundreds of “friends” but feel so desperately lonely?